Diaspora Policies, Consular Services and Social Protection for Czech Citizens Abroad

Abstract

The Czech diaspora counts approximately 2.5 million people with Czech origins, including some 912,000 people born in Czechia. Although the diaspora has not been of crucial concern to Czech authorities and political parties in the past decades, a greater interest can be seen in recent years. This chapter is a first attempt at presenting a consolidated overview of the institutional and policy structure towards the Czech diaspora in various areas, showing that Czechia’s engagement with its nationals abroad centers on cultural and educational policies and involves an extension of voting rights, while consular services are conventional and social protection is considered to be primarily the task of the migrants’ host countries. Some exceptions are noted in the areas of health care and pensions. This is being explained by the fact that emigration has not been perceived as a threat to the Czech economy in the past few decades, and the observation that many of the policies introduced came out from bottom-up efforts.